A. Field of Invention
This invention relates to a system and methods for global information management and, more particularly, to global database normalization through the unique identification of data records.
B. Discussion of the Background
Since the introduction of the personal computer and popular use of web browsers, the Internet has reached just about every important area of modern life. It has changed the way people communicate with each other, research, entertain themselves, shop, work, educate, bank and stay in touch. During this relatively short period of time many new technologies have emerged, triumphed and disappeared again to be replaced by new developments.
When the World Wide Web emerged around 1990, no-one, not even its creators, could envision the multifaceted functionality and global proliferation of the web today. The web was originally designed to serve limited goals. Therefore, the foundation of the web, represented by a set of basic standards like HyperText Markup Language (HTML) and the Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP), mirrored those limited goals. The original standards were related to data transmission and data presentation but lacked structure.
Considering the lack of structure of Internet technology, it is astonishing how far the Internet has evolved. What remains unchanged is the speed with which the amount of information on the Internet is growing. It succeeds all information accumulated by humankind in thousands of years and continues to grow every day. Information on the Internet is reaching the point where it's too large to be effectively searched, filed, indexed, briefed, organized or numbered.
Yet information overload on the Internet is just part of the problem. An even larger amount of information is stored all over the world in millions of private and corporate personal computers (PCs) and servers. Thus, information management is becoming the major challenge of the day.
However, to cope with this challenge, the vast majority (e.g., 95%) of all computer users still use file manager applications (e.g., Windows Explorer for Windows or File Manager for Mac OS) as the main tool for information management. In that respect, in the last 30 years not much has changed for the average computer user. For them information management is basically nothing more then manually creating directories, inventing file names and moving files or messages between those directories.
There have been some developments. The information technology (IT) industry has responded to the problem of information glut with a variety of information management applications. Today, software companies offer a number of conventional software solutions to help customers organize and navigate through the information flood. Yet, due to complexity, high maintenance requirements and high costs, these conventional software solutions are affordable only to larger corporate customers. Thus, only a tiny minority of computer users have the privilege of using conventional information management systems. The vast majority (e.g., over 1 billion users) is left behind.
In addition, conventional information management systems (IMS) have a number of decisive limitations. One limitation is that conventional IMS are limited to managing information within one single system (e.g., company or organization). FIG. 1 illustrates this limitation. There are three main sources of information that need to be organized by an information management system: (A) information generated within a system, (B) information received from other systems, and (C) general information from the Internet. All structuring performed by an information management system 101a of computer system 101 is not transferable to other systems. Accordingly, the structuring performed by the information management system 101a is lost as soon as that information is sent to computer system 102. IMS 102a of system 102 has to start from the beginning and structure the incoming information.
A second limitation is that conventional information management systems do not operate automatically. Conventional IMS are just supporting tools to help computer users organize digital information. The presence and active participation of the end user is always required. Therefore, information management remains a labor-intensive task, and users must invest a considerable amount of time and efforts to perform information management tasks. Billions of dollars are wasted worldwide every day to structure/restructure information over and over again.